As they continued to walk, more flowers, of all shapes, sizes, and colors, surrounded them on both sides. Neither of them had ever seen such a profusion of color. At the same time, the sounds they had been hearing abated. A little later, when Richard and Nicole were in the middle of me flower region, the noises disappeared altogether.
The path narrowed to a couple of meters, barely wide enough for them to walk side by side and not brush the plants on which the flowers were growing. Richard left the trail several times to inspect and smell one of me amazing flowers. Each excursion caused the fireflies to swoop back in their direction. Despite Richard’s enthusiasm for his trips into the forest, Nicole heeded the guides and remained on the path.
Richard was about eight meters off to the left, trying to obtain a closer look at a gigantic flower that looked like an
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Oriental carpet, when he disappeared suddenly from view. “Ouch,” Nicole heard him yell as he fell to the ground.
“Are you all right?” she said immediately.
“Yes,” he said. “I just tripped over some vines and fell into a bunch of thorns. The bush surrounding me has red leaves as well as tiny, bizarre flowers that look like bullets. They smell like cinnamon, incidentally.”
“Do you need any help?” Nicole asked.
“Nope. I’ll just climb out of here in a jiffy.”
Nicole glanced up and noticed that one of the two fireflies was racing off in the distance. Now, what’s that all about? she was wondering when she heard Richard again.
“I may need some help after all,” he said. “I seem to be stuck.”
Nicole took a cautious step off die path. The remaining firefly went crazy, zooming down almost into her face. Nicole was temporarily blinded.
“Don’t come over here, Nicole,” Richard said abruptly a few seconds later. “Unless I am losing my mind, I believe this plant is preparing to eat me.”
“What?” Nicole said, now frightened. “Are you serious?” She waited impatiently for her eyes to recover from the overdose of fight.
“Yes, I am,” Richard said. “Get back on the path. This bizarre bush has wrapped yellow tendrils around my arms and legs . . . some crawling bugs are already drinking the blood caused by the thorns . . . and there is an opening in the bush, toward which I am slowly being pulled, that looks like a distant cousin of some of the more unpleasant mouths I have seen in zoos. I can even see some teeth.”
Nicole could hear the panic in Richard’s voice. She took another step in his direction, but again the firefly blinded her.
“I can’t see anything,” she yelled. “Richard, are you still there?”
“Yes,” he answered. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”
They heard the sound of animals moving quickly through the forest, along with a high-pitched whine. Sud-
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denly three octospiders appeared, brandishing peculiar long, skinny weapons. The octos fired a liquid spray at the carnivorous bush and within seconds the bush released Richard. The aggressive plant immediately hid its mouth again behind its many branches.
Richard stumbled over and hugged Nicole. They both yelled ‘Thank you” as the trio of octospiders vanished into the forest as swiftly as they had appeared. Neither Richard nor Nicole noticed that the two fireflies were again hovering over their heads.
Nicole examined Richard carefully but found nothing except cuts and scratches. “I think I’ll stay on the path awhile,” he said, smiling wanly.
“That’s probably not a bad idea,” Nicole replied.
They talked about what had happened as they continued to walk through the forest. Richard was still shaken. “The branches close to my left shoulder pulled apart,” he said, “and there was this hole, initially about the size of a baseball. But as the wave action of the tendrils carried me in that direction, the hole grew larger.” He shuddered. ‘That’s when I saw the little teeth, ringing the circumference. I had just started thinking about how it would feel to be eaten when our friends the octospiders arrived.”
“So what’s going on here?” Nicole said a little later. They had left the flower region and were again surrounded by trees and jungle growth and intermittent animal noises.
“Damned if I know,” Richard replied.
The forest ended abruptly just as Richard and Nicole were becoming unbearably hungry. They stepped out upon an empty plain. In front of them, perhaps two kilometers away, a great green dome filled their view.
“Now what is—”
“It’s the Emerald City, darling,” Richard said. “Certainly you recognize it from the old movie. And inside is the Wizard of Oz, ready to grant all our wishes.”
Nicole smiled and kissed her husband. “The wizard was a fake, you know,” she said. “He didn’t really have any power.”
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“That’s open to some question,” Richard said with a grin.
While they were talking, the two lights that had been guiding them sped away toward the green dome, leaving Richard and Nicole in near darkness. They pulled their flashlights out of their packs. “Something tells me we’re near the end of our hike,” Richard said, striding across the ground in the direction of the Emerald City.
They could see the gates through their binoculars from a distance of more than a kilometer. Both Richard and Nicole were becoming quite excited. “Do you think that’s the home city of the octospiders?” Nicole asked.
“Yes, indeed,” Richard said. “It must be quite a place. The top of that green dome is at least three hundred meters above the ground. I would guess that the area underneath exceeds ten square kilometers.”
“Richard,” Nicole asked when they were only about six hundred meters away, “what is our plan? Are we just going to walk up and knock on the gate?”
“Why not?” Richard answered, his pace quickening.
When they were two hundred meters from the gate, it opened and three figures emerged. Richard and Nicole heard a yell as one of the figures began moving rapidly toward mem. Richard stopped and used his binoculars again. “It’s Ellie,” he shouted. “And Eponine. . . . They’re with an octospider.”
Nicole had already dropped her pack and was jogging across the plain. She grabbed her beloved daughter in her arms and lifted her off the ground with the strength of her embrace, “Oh, Ellie, Ellie,” she said, the tears cascading down her cheeks.
5
Ti
his is our friend Archie. He has been a big help to us while we have been staying here. Archie, meet my mother and father.”
The octospider responded with a sequence that began with a brilliant crimson and was followed by a teal green, a lavender, two different yellows (one a saffron and the other a lemon, tending toward chartreuse), and a final purple. The band of colors ran completely around the octospider’s spherical head and then disappeared back into the left side of the slit formed by the two long, parallel indentations in the middle of its face.
“Archie says it’s a pleasure to meet you, especially after hearing so much about you,” Ellie said.
“You can read their colors?” Nicole asked, quite shocked.
“Ellie’s great,” said Eponine. “She’s picked up their language very quickly.” t
“But how do you speak to them?” Nicole asked.
“Their eyesight is incredibly keen,” Ellie replied, “and
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they are remarkably intelligent. Archie and a dozen others have already learned to read lips. But we can talk about all that later, Mother. First tell me about Nikki and Robert. Are they all right?”
“Your daughter grows more adorable every day; and she misses you terribly. But I’m afraid Robert has never completely recovered. He still blames himself for not having protected you better.”
The octospider Archie politely followed the personal conversation for several minutes before tapping Ellie on the shoulder and then reminding her that her parents were probably tired and cold.
“Thanks, Archie,” Ellie said. “Okay, here’s the plan. The two of you are to come inside the city for at least tonight and tomorrow—a kind of hotel suite has been set up just inside the gate for the four of us—and the day after tomorrow, or whenever you are properly rested, we will all return to the others. Archie will go with us.”
“Why didn’t the three of you simply come to where we were in the first place?” Richard said after a brief silence.
“I asked the same question, Dad . . . and never did receive what I considered a satisfactory answer.”
The bands of color on Archie’s head interrupted what Ellie was saying. “All right,” she said to the octospider before turning back to her parents. “Archie says the octos wanted you two especially to have a clear idea of what they are all about—anyway, we can discuss all this after we settle in our suite.”